Andrew Frank

Defying its numerous obituaries, broadcast television set a new world’s record last night as Super Bowl 44 attracted more viewers than any TV show in history – 106.5 million according to Nielsen – beating the previous record of just under 106 million for the series finale of M*A*S*H which aired on Feb. 28, 1983. This triumph also clearly showed how new media needn’t displace old media, as millions of viewers tweeted their way through the game, commenting on everything from plays to commercials in a virtual party that spanned the nation. Web sites may have superior reach, but there’s nothing on the planet that can focus the simultaneous attention of so many rapt consumers on a screen and deliver it to advertisers.

The 2010 BrandBowl, a Twitter-based ad competition produced by the Mullen Ad Agency and Radian6, a social media measurement company, declared Doritos and Google the winning advertisers, and I was not alone in feeling gratified that Google chose to open its coffers to CBS on this occasion, and produced an ad that not only effectively romanced its search product, but also (as David Card pointed out in a tweet) gave new hope to copywriters all over the world.

Last year I wrote about how advertisers like E*Trade had fumbled keywords like shankapotamus, turning over their traffic to folks like me. This year E*Trade got the message and bought milkaholic, and a number of other advertisers followed suit.

But the spot I want to talk about didn’t even make the #brandbowl top 10, despite featuring Beyonce, the Twitter Bird, and a host of other online icons. Unless I miss my mark, most of America had no idea what to make of it. Here it is:

It’s tempting to enumerate the many reasons why this ad is a failure from a creative standpoint – basically, it’s a cacophony of clashing and contradictory metaphors and idioms with no clear brand promise or value proposition – but it’s nonetheless noteworthy in its attempt to go mainstream with the message of Internet on your TV. And therein lies a tale of interest.

We are reminded that, a year ago, Yahoo! made headlines announcing its platform for TV widgets, called Yahoo! Connected TV, at CES2009, to be supported by four major TV manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, LG, and Visio). Yesterday, Yahoo was featured on the Vizio widget bar, but like all of the other manufacturers, Vizio has chosen to brand its own widget platform – VIZIO Internet Apps (VIA) – and give Yahoo tenant status. This is rapidly leading to a condition where each manufacturer has its own proprietary widget platform, which, needless to say, is a path to doom for the whole idea.

Meanwhile, Canoe Ventures (remember them?) and CableLabs announced the completion of a new (yet-to-be-fully-revealed) standard called EBIF IO6 (“IO6” for short) which extends the original EBIF specification to cover widget-like applications that are delivered outside the context of an individual show or channel (“unbound” in industry parlance). That puts the standard on an apparent collision course with the manufacturer’s Internet-connected TV aspirations, and is sure to make for an interesting race to critical mass.

This appears to be a good-news, bad-news story. The bad news is that developers and content providers will not have a single platform to target with applications for some time. The good news, however, is that the race is (back) on, and that the service providers and manufacturers have little choice but to accelerate their efforts if they’re to have any chance at achieving critical mass in the marketplace before their opponents. Nothing like competition to bring out the in us.

The big question, of course, remains: what are these magical TV widgets that are going to engage consumer interest in new sets and services? After all, tweeting on a smartphone during the game didn’t seem so bad. Oops, there’s the whistle, seems like we’re out of time….

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